


as if led by a leash

by PikaCheeka



Series: suffer the children [2]
Category: DRAMAtical Murder (Visual Novel)
Genre: Kids being creepy, M/M, Medical Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 15:20:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12560332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PikaCheeka/pseuds/PikaCheeka
Summary: Trip doesn't know what attracts him to Virus, and he's terrified that when the bandages fall from his new eyes, the older boy will no longer be recognizable.He would rather Virus remain blind and incapacitated forever if it means he won't lose him.STANDALONE FIC. The "suffer the children" series is composed of standalone pieces about ViTri at the institute.





	as if led by a leash

**Author's Note:**

> This is a companion piece to "suffer the children", though it is a standalone! I will continue to write some more fics of lil ViTri (all under this "series", though they can all be read independently).
> 
> Once again, I am greatly indebted to acatfeet, who brainstormed with me about lil ViTri and gave me a few vivid images that this fic eventually grew out of.

It's cold under the bed, something he finds alarming _. If it's so cold here, how can it be any warmer above? Why is the room so frigid? Virus is always cold, don't they know that? Don't they know how pale he is, how his blood is visible beneath his skin and his hands are like ice and he shivers sometimes even in June?_ But he doesn't dare move, because they will take him away if he does. He only lies there, stretches his hands above his head and presses his hands to the underside of the bed, stretches his fingers and rests his palms against it. Virus is only inches beyond his fingertips, but he feels an unfathomable distance away. An ocean maybe, stretching for miles and miles between them, depths of darkness and fearful faces that he can't traverse. Trip lives on an island, but he's never seen the ocean, the sea. He only knows he went over it once, because he was told he was born in Osaka, a faraway place Virus had shown him on a map last year, and there was blue between there and here, where Virus is.

And there wasn't much before Virus.

He doesn't expect there to be much after Virus either.

He wants to be with him as much as possible right now, while he can be, because at any moment something might go wrong. And when the bandages come off…. He isn’t sure who Virus will be, who he himself will be, because maybe all that drew them together were those eyes, the eyes that will no longer be the same. This is why he lies under his bed, why he rests his palms against the boxsprings and stares upwards into the darkness.

-

“Come on, 07734. It’s chilly on the floor, isn’t it?”

He's slow to realize someone is even speaking to him. They are coaxing him to move, but they are doing it gently, in those ugly fake voices he despises so much. He and the children had been allowed to watch TV occasionally. There was a news story a few weeks back about a boar that had gotten into someone's house somehow. On the mainland. He'd asked Virus if he'd ever seen a wild boar, if either one of them ever would, and Virus had just pushed a hand over his mouth and told him he was being too loud. But the man trying to draw the boar outside, lure her with food, has spoken like this. Fearful, hesitant, aware of how explosive and violent the animal could be. _I'm only eight. It's pathetic how afraid they are of me._ But he is also afraid of them, afraid they will take him away. He wants to tell them off, though his mouth won't work.

“We're going to have to call the orderlies. We don't want to have to sedate you but...” The threat is there. They will do it. They always do. Even if he is only eight.

“No.”

 _But I didn't even speak, did I?_ And then Trip freezes. _Virus._ Even blind, even at only fourteen, when he is small for his age with a delicate face and wrists and ankles so thin Trip often wonders how he has survived at the institute as long as he has, there is an authority in his voice that startles, then stills, the entire room. It's the first time Trip has heard him since he awoke from the surgery two days before. He hadn't been beneath the bed the entire time, but enough of it to know this is the first word Virus has spoken clearly in two days.

“Let him stay.”

It’s a long moment before one of the nurses clears her throat. “He should at least get off the floor.” There is a hesitance in her voice that makes Trip bite back a grin.

“Mm. He can stay up here.” Trip watches as Virus’ fingers, long and pretty, dip over the edge of the bedframe and beckon to him. He wonders absently how the older boy knows what direction he is facing, knows which side to drop his hand over, but it hardly matters, because now he is scrambling up, crawling out from under the bed and immediately into it. He knows he shouldn’t bump the IV stand, knows he shouldn’t tangle the tubes, but he does it anyway – none of them are critical to Virus’ survival at this point, he figures – as he slips under the covers and glowers at the two nurses who still aren’t moving.

And then Virus rolls away from him, pointedly turns his back on him and pulls the covers over his shoulder and sighs softly, as if preparing for sleep.  It's nothing Trip isn't used to, his abrupt turns of attitude, his apparent flippancy that can be so offputting to the other children. To Trip, it's simply Virus, doing exactly what he wants, unwilling to pretend unless there's a clear advantage; he hardly finds it surprising when the older boy's breath begins to slow almost immediately.  The nurses exchange a look of confusion before sighing and withdrawing while Trip immediately relaxes, face pressed into the pillow and inhaling the scent of Virus' sweat. It's enough.

He only looks at Virus once before turning away again. It haunts him, seeing Virus with half of his pointed face covered in bandages. There are too many bandages. It seems unnecessary to cover so much. He wonders where his glasses are, if he will still need them when he opens his eyes again, and he wonders where his earrings are, little holes where they once had been. Virus doesn’t look _whole_ without these things, and it makes Trip uneasy.  

He presses into Trip at some point in the night, slides back over the mattress until he's flat against him, but Trip doesn't dare turn to hold him, wrap his arms around his waist and cling to him as he often does. He only pushes back until he can feel their spines rubbing together, unwilling to turn his back to the room. _I have to protect him, back to back because if I ever face him, someone will come, someone will take him away._

It’s only later that he remembers Virus is blind now, that Virus needs someone to watch both sides for him, that someone can still take him away.

-

They only bring one breakfast tray in the morning, which Trip begins to protest until he feels that reassuring hand on his arm. _How does he know? How can he sense there's only one tray?_

“It's okay. We can share it.”

Trip nods, only catching himself when Virus doesn't react. “Ah...okay,” he whispers, and he straightens his back to press his chin onto the older boy's shoulder. He smells of sweat and antiseptic and bandages. He watches his fingers, long and thin, grope around the tray for the milk carton, the vibrant pink sliced peaches in a cup, the bowl of oatmeal, the hard-boiled egg. Trip thinks it's a bit mean to give one of those to a blind child, and he silently hopes he'll get that.

 _Maybe it will be better if Virus never regains his eyesight._ _He can rely on me forever, for everything. He'll always stay near me. And I won't have to know if it was only the eyes. I won't have to face him, won't have to know if he will open his eyes and be someone else, be a faceless monster like the rest._

There is something delicate, fragile, about blind Virus that day. He touches Trip more than he ever does. He touches his face, runs his fingerpads over his lips and cheeks and eyelids. _Because you don't talk a lot. I can't tell what you're thinking if I can't see your face._ And Trip revels in it, begins talking even less, which Virus doesn't seem to mind.

There is a thinly veiled frustration to his behavior that is at once alarming and attractive. The older boy can't cry as he recovers, but sometimes his lower lip trembles and he makes that little hissing sound he makes when angry. He drops things, misses when he reaches for something, even nearly falls off the bed once, is clearly bored at being unable to read anything. He mutters of an itching deep in his skull and claws at his bandages more than once, only to stop each time because Trip grabs his wrists without even thinking.  

Only once does he ask him, _help me_ , when he decides he needs to get up, wander around, and Trip helps him up, guides him through the tangle of wires and wheels the IV stand behind him. _You’re like a dog_ , he’d said afterwards, his voice soft and white.

-

“Will I be in the same program as you?” The second morning. They’d let him stay the night again, though they brought in a second cot, ordered him to sleep there and even strapped his wrists to the railings, and they’d dragged him away for several hours in the evening while they ran tests on Virus. Those tests lasted too long.

“I don’t know,” the older boy says curtly, his mouth a thin line as he fumbles for the spoon – Trip tries not to notice how much weaker he seems since the evening before because it means nothing _nothing_ he just hasn’t slept recently – on his breakfast tray. If the abrupt question surprises him, he shows no reaction. “This is the same thing I had yesterday isn’t it?”

“Yea. Sick food. I want the same eyes. I want to do the same stuff as you.”

“Why? We don’t even know if you’ll like me after this.” He says it matter-of-factly, as if stating the weather, but his mouth continues to be that ugly flat line he makes when angry, when stressed, when scared. He shuts down. It’s what he does. _Maybe he’s pissed about the food._ But Trip doubts that.

“I will.” But he doesn't know if he will.  It isn't a lie if he isn't sure, is it? Can you lie about the future? He'd promised Virus he'd never lie to him some time ago, and he worries at the blanket between them now. It’s several long seconds before it hits him. “How’dya know I’m worried ‘bout that?”

He only shrugs, picking up a few peace slices and dropping them into the oatmeal before licking his fingers. He misses his mouth at first. “You’re a little predictable. And I’m wondering it, too.”

“Oh.” He doesn’t know how to react, and merely watches Virus try to eat. _Are you worried about it, too?_ But he can’t bring himself to ask. It’s pushing too hard beyond a boundary they have carefully built. Being blind has made Virus worried about him, about _them_. A useful development. He can learn to live with a blind Virus.

One bite, two bites. Virus pushes the tray back and sighs. “You know.” And he stops abruptly. “There might be a problem. With my eyes. It's why I let you sleep here the last two nights. I was...” Worried. Scared. There are a thousand words Trip could fill that silence with.

“A problem.” The word terrifies him, even if only seconds ago he had been hoping Virus might stay blind. The surgery was only a few days ago, and Trip knows a lot can go wrong even months later.

“Yea. Rejection. Everyone is worried when they run tests now, when they check my temperature and my bloodwork and lift the bandages to look, to clean everything. And Dr. _____ is upset.” His voice is trembling faintly and suddenly Trip isn't hungry anymore.

“Does it hurt? It ain't a problem if it doesn't hurt.” He's been in the hospital for two years now. He knows this is a brazen lie, but he's only eight, so he can pretend to be stupid and maybe it won't count as a lie. He knows the doctor has come a lot, knows he is upset, because he recognizes his shoes and the hatred he feels whenever he sees him curls inside of his skull is a hatred reserved only for him.

“Of course it hurts,” he snaps. “They cut my eyes out. I've had a headache and it burns.”

Every muscle in Trip's body tightens then. Because Virus is angry with him. Virus has never been angry with him. He opens and closes his mouth to apologize, but it doesn't come. _I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry for even thinking it, for wanting you blind for even a second._

It's as if Virus knows he did wrong then, because suddenly his fingers are curling around Trip's and he squeezes them gently. Trip doesn't return the gesture, only stares at their hands, at the overlapping skin tones, the depths of their nailbeds.

-

Virus is right. Virus is always right.

By the end of the day, a day of Trip nervously twisting his hands in the sheets while Virus sleeps, he proves to be right. He sleeps too much, sweats too much, makes too many little noises that don't sound good, and his fever skyrockets. They take Trip away then, drag him from the bed and for once they are kind to him, which Trip knows is never good. _They're never nice to me unless it's something bad. Virus is dying then._

They try to explain it to him. Virus has a rare blood type, or a rare abnormality therein, so rare they couldn't find a proper transplant to develop the technology on. They had to compromise. They use a lot of words he can't understand. They assure him they didn't use the wrong one, which would have caused hyperacute rejection. Something about a new stem cell cocktail. Trip knows nothing of medicine but he knows what Virus would say if he knew. Illegal. Experimental. Dangerous. Stupid. “Why'd you use it on him?”

The nurse only stares at him.

“He's the favorite. Why'd you pick him then?” His voice cracks. He hasn't spoken this much to anyone but Virus, the only one who can unlock his vocal chords.

“We're doing what we can for him. We don't want him to die either.”

It's the wrong thing to say. _Die. Die die die. He's going to die. And I will be alone again.. There will be no peace, no calm, ever again now. Because nobody can replace him._ He suddenly begins screaming, and they don't even try to help him. Because they are used to this, used to his breakdowns, his rage, his fear.

They only take him away, lock him up, as he snaps and descends, regresses into the madness that had possessed the first six years of his life.

He breaks all of his nails against the walls, chews on them, splintered and torn nearly to the roots. Cracks his head against the floor until they throw him into a padded room. Repeatedly takes his clothing off, unable to bear the feeling of the seams, the cloth rustling against his skin, the touch of different fabrics, curls up in the corner and howls. The world is too much for him without Virus. A horrific blurring, mud and shit and filth.

He's the insane one, the broken one. Trash. Useless. Too violent. Too unstable. Brain damaged. Stupid. Can't obey orders. Can't even make eye contact. Compulsive. Slow. Vicious. Subhuman. That one is a favorite of Virus' to latch onto when he was tearing down the staff. _It's subhuman to do this to children, isn't it? Yet they call you that?_ He'd snapped once. But Virus Virus _Virus_ he might be gone now. _They won't even tell me if he dies._

He suddenly remembers homelessness. He remembers filthy streets, smog lifting off the pavement in the early mornings, dirty newspapers rolling down alleys. He remembers crows. A lot of crows. A lot of girls around him laughing, sighing, swearing, as they root through trash, rub dirt on his face and stand belligerently in doorways and ask for money, pretty themselves up so they can drag him down store aisles and teach him to steal. Maybe one was his mother, but they never had any faces and he can't be sure. He thinks perhaps not, because they always gushed over his hair, so perhaps they found him somewhere. A trash can. A bathroom stall. A coin locker. A place where people leave things they don’t want. Everything was filthy, back then. And the people...they weren't even people. There were no people before Virus, no clarity, only mud, confusion, fear, ugliness, _filth_.  

Without Virus, he can only ever be homeless, sick for a home that only existed for one fleeting moment in the fingertips of an older boy.

He thinks of clawing his eyes out, so that he will never have to see the monsters around him that he knows will return when Virus is gone.

-

A week passes. They give up on Trip, just as he fears they give up on Virus.

They leave him in the padded room he had spent so much time in before he first laid eyes on the older boy while his sanity decays. He tells himself he can adjust. He tells himself he can adapt. But he is not Virus; he cannot learn to survive the way he can. He is not a virus. He is a mistake, a stumbler, barreling his way through life in fear and confusion whereas Virus bends it to his will by adapting _just enough_ , morphing _just enough_ , and then snapping his jaws shut at just the right moment, fangs turned inwards and downwards. Everything in his being is finely attuned to endure, whereas Trip only knows how to survive by brute force and viciousness, by falling and crashing through whatever obstacles face him. He doesn’t know the subtler forms of survival.

But even as he lies on the floor and stares at the blank wall before him, he knows that even Virus has his limits. He knows that his own strengths, as useless as they are most of the time, are what might be needed to survive whatever it is Virus is dying from now. They were given one another’s trials, and the irony is not lost on him.

It's the doctor in charge of Virus – E-31337 as he knows him, because only Trip calls him by the name he himself chose for the older boy – who finally comes to him, who bends down (he was never afraid of him) and whispers calmly. But Trip hears none of it. _I don't want to hear. It's only bad things he says and does and brings. Virus is dead. Virus is blind. Virus is going to be thrown away. I'm homeless again._

He pries his fingers away from his ears, touching him with a command and an assurance no other doctor or nurse has. “It isn't bad news. Your little friend recovered. Come see him.”

The relief is quickly washed away by fear, apprehension. The old fear back again. _What if he isn't the same? What if everything in us that is the same is gone now?_ But he can't ask, because noone understands. Instead he holds his feet out, lets the doctor put his laceless shoes back on, and stands up slowly. The man doesn't offer him a hand, because he knows Trip won't take it, and only looks back once as he leaves the room. Trip, so rarely allowed to roam the halls on his own, follows dutifully behind, drawn to Virus as if led by a leash.

-

Virus is in a new room, on a new bed, with more tubes and needles hooked up to his arms now, but he is half-sitting, propped up against the pillows. There is a visor in his lap, protective goggles that he had likely been wearing earlier. _He’s been waiting for me_ , Trip realizes, but his eyes are closed, and he is paralyzed with fear. He unconsciously steps back a pace, bumping into the doctor behind him who sighs and pushes him forward none too gently with his foot. But he can’t get much closer. _I’m not ready for this._

When Virus opens his eyes, there is a parallel fear in his gaze. _He shows emotion now._ This takes Trip aback.

He feels the air still around him, that narrowing of his world to the boy before him that he felt two long years ago now. _I'm still the same. We're still the same._ Most of his eyelashes are broken, bent, and there are deep bruises around his eyes that will take nearly a month to fade – bruises linger on him for long enough to sometimes alarm those around him – dotted with small cuts that edge around his eyes, a second set of eyelashes, and even a stitch or two. But his eyes. They are a deep and vibrant teal blue, a color that makes Trip think inexplicably of the ocean. _Because there is no beforeVirus and there is no afterVirus and there is only Virus._

He betrays himself with his own eyes before he can react, because they both smile in the same moment. He’s pretty when he smiles, when the tip of his tongue darts out to lick his upper lip, when the grin spreads across his face. He has a crooked canine, a tooth that grew in sideways, and a little bow to his lips that Trip had always found unbearably distracting, and he still has babyfat on his face even as a teenager. Trip resists the urge to run to him to touch him, to examine him. He only stares, uncertain of the feeling flooding through him. _Relief_. Not only because he survived but because they still have _that_.

“It’s okay, hm?”

“Yea. It’s the same.” The same feeling. The same adoration. Devotion. Dedication. He still wants to follow him to the ends of the earth, still wants to protect him, still wants to _be_ him. And he keeps standing there stupidly, awestruck.

-

That night is the first night he touches him. An accident. Virus abruptly shifting in his sleep, knocking Trip's arm that had been around his waist so that his hand fell over his crotch.

“Mmm...” Virus shudders, squirms and arches his back, presses back against him. Trip likes this, likes knowing he can do this to the older boy, even if he doesn’t know what exactly he is doing. He shifts his weight, pushes his other arm beneath Virus and runs his hand up the front of his shirt. He's warm and soft, slim enough that his ribcage wasn't much wider than Trip's at nearly twice his age.

And then he wakes up with a gasp.  Trip stops moving, unsure of what the boy will do. It's another long moment before Virus whispers an, “Okay. That's enough.”

But Virus is smiling when he turns to face him, his lazy half-awake smile, and Trip doesn’t hesitate. He grabs the sides of his face and pulls him closer, presses against him, cheekbone to cheekbone, nose to nose. The room is dark, but not so dark that they can't see one another, and Trip finds himself fixating on his eyes. His new eyes, visible again as he takes off the visor to sleep. They glow a very faint blue in the dark, so subtle it could be dismissed by anyone who doesn't study him as intently as Trip does. He's still pretty, still perfect, even with the deep bruises around his eyes. And he licks him, runs his tongue over those bruises, the eyes, the new eyes. Virus doesn't blink, and Trip can taste him. _He can taste him._ Even if these eyes were not once Virus, they are now. They taste just like him, like the sweat, the blood, the soft skin, that Trip has licked so many times over the last two years. He purrs against his face.

It's only then, when he drops his face down, presses his nose to him again, that he realizes Virus has his lips parted, and the older boy sighs softly then before closing them. It's an attractive sound, one that stirs something in Trip's fingers, as Virus whispers. “You're so weird. I wasn't expecting that.”

“What then?”

“Never mind.”

“Okay.” He pauses. He knows this sometimes annoys Virus, how readily he accepts everything, so he asks next, “Are you happy?”

His eyes are half-closed, already drifting off again. He clearly hasn't slept properly in days. “Hm. Yep. You?”

Trip only beams.

-

He loves these days, this time while Virus recovers. Because he is his and his alone then. Virus has no classes, no further experiments, is only taken away for an hour a day to ensure he gets some exercise and another half hour or so to run tests, to make sure he is recovering properly.  But they trust him to put his eye drops in every hour, to only take his visor off for short periods during the day time. Trip is able to be with him for much of this time, even if he’d licked his eyeball and risked infection, a fact that the staff knows nothing of. Only because it's Virus, because he's a favorite, because he threatens that he will stab his eyes out, that he won't recover, unless his every demand is met. The staff are terrified, and thus spoil him. He takes full advantage of this, bossing the nurses around, demanding extra dessert, audiobooks and music recordings that were normally only allowed in limited quantities, and he says he wants Trip with him. _I'll get bored. You can't leave me here all day alone. I don't want anyone else because the other patients are irritating. He doesn’t pay attention in his classes anyway. He won’t miss anything. He won’t bother me. He doesn’t even talk. He knows when I need quiet. Nobody else does._

But he doesn’t need quiet, because he himself never shuts up. Virus talks endlessly when they are alone, likely about everything he had thought about while lying there lonely and feverish while Trip was locked up. He speaks of the surgery. _It’s pretty horrible. Not just the surgery, but being blind afterwards… I can’t go back to that life again, where I couldn’t see anything. But if you have it, it shouldn’t be a big deal. You’re so physical, visceral_ – Trip has no idea what this means – _that losing one sense shouldn’t matter to you. You get too easily overwhelmed anyway, don’t you?_ And he speaks of the institute. _What are we, after all of this? The experiments. The drugs, the surgeries, the gene splicing, whatever the hell else they do to us. How many of us are actually here for the purpose of being perfected_ – he’s fairly certain Virus can’t be perfected – _of working for the man who runs this place, and how any of us are only here as guinea pigs? That damn doctor won’t tell me enough, no matter what I do for him._ Some of what he says alarms Trip, but he stays silent for the most part.

He’s used to this, that slight _offness_ with Virus that he has always found so attractive, a tantalizing lure that guides him in the darkness, so viciously in contrast to the older boy’s gentle appearance. There is a cut in his gaze as he speaks that Trip feels in his blood _. We are the same._

-

It's six days, on the evening before they have to be reintegrated with the rest of the children, before Virus finally tells him, flat and serene as ever despite the announcement that drops the floor beneath them.

“I’ll have to wear my glasses again because they gave me my eyes back.”

“Huh...” There is a lurch of fear in Trip’s gut.

“It was more successful that way, to just operate on them like that instead of giving me entirely new ones. I'm the only one who didn't die because of it. This will be the new way to do it. So if you...”

The hint is not enough for Trip – it isn’t enough to know that Virus is at least thinking about him getting the same surgery – because he's distracted now. “Well now I don't know.”

“Hm?”

“If it's just your eyes. I gotta worry again if you lose them. That you'll disappear.” He’s starting to panic, wrists drawn up to his shoulders and hands loose and twitching.

“Don’t,” and those long fingers are wrapped around his forearms now. “It's not just the eyes.”

“How d'ya know?”

“I just know.”

“But you were worried before…”

He looks at Trip for a long moment then, eyes bright and burrowing deep into him as he whispers, “Trust me.”

And he does. He always does.

 


End file.
